Room Constant

I haven’t written by hand in a long time, until now. New habits so boring. I have no light or wifi in my house, and I don’t want to think that’s the only reason I’m writing by hand, but maybe it’s true. I wonder when I’ll write a true letter again. It should be right now, for whoever, however, without waiting for a mundane need that might never come. Although I must say that over time, an old fear has grown in me of the contours of the material world, of concreteness, of objects per se. Even now I write with a pen that can be erased. Sometimes I try to deceive myself and say it’s out of respect, but it’s a lack of courage.

My printing machine just made some resurrection noises. That means the power is back, and I am afflicted by the crisis of an angel II, as if I didn’t have the will to remove the light myself. I had just lit a small candle entering in the mood for love, in the mood for handwriting. 

The empty space and the silence. On this occasion, I prefer oyente over listener.

To my left I see the Posthuman Dada Guide. Under my chin, the Pocket Handbook, Noise, Vibration, Light, Thermal Comfort. This last one is my new obsession and my joy. With all my heart, I want the power to go out. Now there’s a booming storm and the balcony windows are open. I’ve managed to get used to the city’s Centro cacophony if I don’t think about it, but when I do, it doesn’t appear; it bursts in, gigantic, filling the room. There isn’t an empty corner left. I can barely hold a small empty silence inside me.

Brüel & Kjær is a Danish sound and vibration measurement company, the authors of my new Pocket Handbook. At the beginning, it has the date September 1986. At the end, Printed in Denmark by Naerum Offset. People who are knowledgeable about sound surely know this famous company, but for me, it’s something new, incomprehensible, and enigmatic. It almost seems like an ancient papyrus with mysterious information that I must protect. I still haven’t decided if I want to study and understand it. If I do, maybe it would lose its negativity in my life. Or is it just laziness to learn?

That little room with the checkered floor seems empty, yet during the day at times it fills with the intense vibrations of the massive speakers they sell in the local shops. It’s even more transgressive and intense than the brutality of an object: it not only moves through walls but invades your organs, shaking them at its mercy. After 7 p.m., the air barely begins to empty with silence.

But it’s a known fact that being quiet isn’t the same as listening. To listen, you need to empty yourself. The density of the plane and the lightness of the void. The whole holding the hollow. After a while of my mind bouncing on them, it seems to me that a silent and full architecture is like a person who knows how to have a conversation with another. An archaic and novel habit.